About

espectro (oespectro.eu) is an independent, non-profit project that compares news coverage in the Portuguese press. It belongs to no media group, no party and no company.

What it does

It reads what the outlets in the register (in Portuguese) publish, groups the articles that describe the same event, and shows each story with the outlets that reported it next to the outlets that did not touch it. Where public sources support it, each outlet carries its editorial position (in Portuguese), from left to right, and that is what draws the bar on every story. Nothing is rewritten or summarised: the headlines are the ones each newsroom published, and every link goes to the original.

Independence

There is no advertising, no sponsored content and no money from parties or campaigns. No news outlet pays to appear here, and none can pay to stop appearing.

Who maintains it

The project is maintained anonymously, so its credibility has to come from the work rather than from a signature. The methodology is published in full, including what was tried and did not work, every rating cites the public sources behind it, and mistakes are dated in the public corrections log (in Portuguese) instead of being fixed in silence.

Contact

News organisations get an answer within 48 hours, whether the request is a correction, a contested rating (right of reply) or the removal of content. Readers write to the same address, and an error pointed out by a reader follows the same path as one pointed out by a newsroom.

Write to contacto@oespectro.eu.

The stories themselves are in Portuguese, because they are headlines written by Portuguese newsrooms, and translating them would mean rewriting what this site exists to show untouched. There is also a Portuguese version of this page.